Torn and Cut Paper

At the Outsider Art Fair, we came across a booth from Main Street Gallery in Milwaukee, Wiscobnsin, featuring collage work by Della Wells. Among many other attributes, her use of torn and cut paper was a marvel, putting together all manner of shades of greens, blues, yellows, reds as the backbone of her collages, like this one, “if they peer in my house, Matisse”:

When I got home, I flipped through magazines to find fields of color, and I’m here to tell you it ain’t easy. To create the effect Wells does, you’ve got to collect, collect, collect. I’m not a collector, and my small stack of magazines yielded . . . not much. But perhaps that constraint is itself worth something: to “make do” with what you have on hand.

Listening List

Bohuslav Martinů: Rhapsody Concerto for Viola and Orchestra

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Credits: The source for the image of the Della Wells collage may be found here. The remainder of the images and underlying collages are mine.

 

 

Trolling the Heilbrunn Timeline: A Goldsmith in His Shop

Petrus Christus, A Goldsmith in His Shop (1449)

On returning from Italy, I decided it was high time I supplemented my scant knowledge of medieval and Renaissance art, so I gathered up a few books* on the subject. After reading said books, it occurred to me that a Renaissance art vacation extender might be available at the Metropolitan Museum, so I looked up the Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. I’d forgotten, if I really ever knew, what a rich resource this is, and trolling around the Medieval/Renaissance sections proved a time sink of the best sort. I picked out a few artworks to visit in person next time I could. Here’s one of those I visited yesterday.

When in Rome: Final Days, Part 2 of 2

Giovanni da Udine, festoon detail, Loggia di Amore e Psiche

I can only say, about our last days in Rome, that we certainly did not go out with a whimper. The opposite of anything we planned, it seems, in retrospect, that we’d been building up to this apotheosis from the moment we arrived.

When in Rome: Final Days, Part 1 of 2

View from Janiculum Hill

We settled on a new strategy for our final two days in Rome. We were again “based” in Trastevere. This time our plan was to explore only more-or-less immediate neighborhoods in an effort to minimize time spent in the logistics of finding our way around. The strategy worked better than we had any right to expect. With a minimum of time spent getting lost, we discovered a trove of Roman treasures most of which would likely not have made it to a short-term visitor “must see” list.

When in Umbria: Spoleto, Part 2

Rocca Albornoziana, second courtyard

The Umbria portion of our travels ended with a final full day in Spoleto. Our first days in Spoleto had coincided with the Rocca Albornoziana closing days, though there was plenty to see looking out over its ramparts.